ĭiscussions on how we became familiar with a music system through enculturation or within an experimental session are longstanding. It is a computer-generated musical scale which shares only limited features with Western music, and is unlike most music from other cultures. In this paper, we examined the learning of a musical scale that is novel to listeners of all backgrounds. To achieve that, collecting baseline data of people learning a new music system is essential.
However, the accessibility and diversity of music creation nowadays make it sensible to expand our research on understanding how one approaches novel musical styles and structures. Past research has provided insights on how humans perceive different attributes of Western music, including tonality, rhythm and timbre, and how enculturation shapes our music perception.
Creating music can be achieved by using computer software, which opens room for non-traditional music. Music has become more accessible since the late 20th century when different music genres and world music from all over the globe can be freely obtained through the media. The funder had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist. The funder is the MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, Western Sydney University. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.ĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This work is funded by the MARCS Postgraduate Scholarship, that was granted to YL for her PhD Candidature. Received: FebruAccepted: AugPublished: August 30, 2018Ĭopyright: © 2018 Leung, Dean. PLoS ONE 13(8):Įditor: Lutz Jäncke, University of Zurich, SWITZERLAND In investigating the learning of a microtonal scale, our study can offer directions for future research on the perception of computer music and new musical genres.Ĭitation: Leung Y, Dean RT (2018) Learning unfamiliar pitch intervals: A novel paradigm for demonstrating the learning of statistical associations between musical pitches. Results are consistent with our predictions. Specifically, a faster response time observed after an incongruent tone would imply participants’ ability to differentiate tones from the microtonal and the diatonic scale, and reflect their learning of the microtonal pitch intervals. We therefore expect a faster response time to the shift after the participants have heard an incongruent tone. Based on our statistical manipulation of the stimuli, incongruent tones would be a better predictor of an incoming TS than the congruent tones. In a follow-up Test phase, the tone before the TS was either a member (congruent) or a non-member (incongruent) of the scale.
During Exposure, 21 non-musicians were instructed to detect a timbre shift (TS) within short microtonal melodies, and we hypothesised that they would incidentally learn about the pitch interval structure of the microtonal scale from attending to the melodies during the task. The experiment is comprised of an Exposure and a Test phase. In this study, we examine whether musically untrained Western listeners can incidentally learn an unfamiliar, microtonal musical scale from simply engaging in a timbre discrimination task. While mastering a musical instrument takes years, becoming familiar with a new music system requires less time and skills.